Chapter 916 - Through the mansion (Patreon)

With her arm locked in mine, Tess leads me toward the mansion. We are let inside after just a moment, as soon as she shows a ring on her pinkie finger. It is entirely purple, set with a bright yellow gem.

The guard gives a small bow, and we step through the entrance.

I notice that no one seems to be doing any obvious magical scans, so I follow suit and even weaken the perception of my eyes. It appears to be a local custom that the people here strictly follow. Tess could probably explain it to me, but she knows I prefer discovering these things on my own. Instead, I simply learn by observing her and the behavior of the people around us.

“Parties like this happen once every few weeks. Handlers like to mingle here, along with the guild masters, powerful locals, and similar figures,” Tess says shortly, pulling me away from the quiet corner I had been pulling us toward.

“So our friends join in often?”

“From what I have heard. With everything they’ve done lately, they have to be careful about where they appear, and this offers some sort of anonymity so they can continue their dealings. This will be the last chance to meet them, as their tutorial will be ending soon.”

“I see. Do you think they have access to a tutorial stay token?”

Tess offers a polite smile to a passing feylith woman. Once the woman is out of earshot, Tess shakes her head. “I don’t think so, though I’m not entirely sure. Aside from you, I haven’t heard of anyone else unlocking one.”

“I see,” I say, nodding.

So far, I have deduced that the mask works together with the array stretched over the mansion. The mask acts as a key, and its obscuring effect wouldn't function without the surrounding field. It uses a subtle mix of illusions, mental magic, camouflage, sensory disruption, signature alteration, and a few other things.

I’ve already noticed that when I look at people, I can only register broad information about them, clothing, and hair color. Beyond that, even details as simple as their height become blurry. It doesn't breach my mental defenses, it would need to be far more powerful to affect my mind, but it effectively scrambles the raw information my senses gather. It feels a bit like the twins' [Sensory Deception].

There is a strange charm to it. Who knows? Maybe the velnar stuffing his face with food in the corner is secretly the Ruler of Pride. Maybe the woman trying to dance on the table is Pathfinder Thane, and the two feylith practically eating each other's faces are actually powerful Absolutes.

Any other day, I would have much more fun with this place. But currently my mood is quite soured because of what happened two weeks ago. It isn't even that it affects me directly. I wouldn't even say we were close friends. Yet, I still feel a bit of responsibility, and the entire situation around it sucks… It just sucks so much. It really pisses me off.

“Nat,” Tess whispers gently. Only then do I realize she has guided us to a snack table, away from the main crowd.

When I turn my head and look at her, she smiles. “It was no one's fault.”

“Yes, I know,” I confirm.

“The best thing we can do now is make them pay.”

“Yes.”

“To make them squeal and to make a show of it here in front of all these people.”

“Yes.”

“It doesn't matter if Handlers or city guards appear to deal with the situation. We will get what we came here to get and butcher that trash.”

“Yes, we will.”

“Good. But until then, do you want to hear about some of my exploits?” Her dark expression, which had been covered by shadows, turns back into a smile, and her voice softens as she begins to pull me through the room.

“I would never have guessed you were someone to get into gambling, Tess.”

“You wouldn't? I'm disappointed then. I thought it was obvious that it would happen to someone like me. You know the type: the sheltered only child kept isolated from the world. Rich, bullied at school, with no real experience with reality outside of books and movies.”

“When you put it like that…”

“Right?”

Almost as if moving to music, she glides us around a cluster of guests, flashing them a charming smile. She smoothly snags a dessert off a passing waitress's tray and pops it into my mouth.

I chew on the sweet, and seeing the expectant look in her eyes, I give her a single nod. “Not bad.”

Only then does she let go of me, catching up to the waitress and returning with four of the same snacks. She feeds one to me and keeps three for herself.

“One of my earliest exploits was hiring an accomplice. I only used that strategy three times, as I thought it would be too suspicious otherwise. That accomplice always stood on the far side of the room behind my opponent, looking into their cards. Then, through the reflection in my accomplice's eyes, I found out what cards that opponent held,” she says.

“That is smart, but it only works in certain situations.”

“Indeed,” she nods. “After that, I tried using my eyes to observe my opponents. You know, to cold-read them using just basic senses, without relying on other senses they could try to manipulate.”

“I guess that one didn't go well.”

“How sharp,” Tess sighs. “I lost two million of your shards during those attempts. But I took it as an investment, and over many games, I learned to make myself very difficult to read while improving my ability to read others.”

“So what did you use?”

“Mostly [Declaration] on myself. Sometimes I even made myself believe I had different cards than I actually did, and I became really good at bluffing.”

“That sounds like a normal thing to do.”

With another weak smile framing her lips, she nods. “I had Sophie store some of her really sneaky mental manipulations into my ring, and we learned how I could activate them through it.” She flashes her low pristine Ring of Preserved Stasis. “In other cases, I relied on my [Telesthesia] to see through their attempts to hide things from me.”

“But of course, everyone else is doing similar things.”

“Yes, and that’s the fun of it. I really think I would have ended up badly and fallen into some terrible addiction back on Earth.”

“I don't think so.”

“You don't?”

“No, I don't.”

“If you say so.” We reach a table where people are playing cards, and Tess greets one of the employees nearby, whispering a password to him.

Unlike the guests, the employees do not wear masks, so I use the opportunity to compare his unmasked presence to the blurred presences of the others. I watch as his smile brightens and he announces to the players that “Red Riding Hood” will be joining after the current round.

Some of the players seem to recognize her by that name and her combination of red clothes and blonde hair. Quick greetings are exchanged.

It takes only a few minutes before Tess slides into her free spot. I remain standing where I am, leaning against the bar and sipping a random drink I picked up.

The game itself doesn't interest me that much, but I observe it anyway. Everyone at the table receives five cards and two dice, and there is a strange crystal in the middle of the table that keeps changing colors. Everyone is cheating, obviously, but can you even call it that when it's baked into the game itself?

I notice a thylarin trying to gain an advantage by influencing the surrounding wooden materials. A feylith woman seems to be manipulating the light, and a vyssari man's eyes are glowing far too brightly.

Tess is all smiles the entire time. Her card plays, and dice rolls are lucky to the point of frustrating a few players, who repeatedly check the central crystal, though it never lights up with the signal they are hoping for.

When the game ends, Tess pulls in all the tokens, excuses herself, and walks back over to me, drawing multiple looks in my direction as well.

For accompanying Tess, I get twenty percent of her winnings.

We walk around looking for the people we're waiting for. Even with camouflage, a group of five moving together shouldn't be hard to spot.

As we pass through one of the quieter parts of the mansion, I notice a woman carrying a plate of desserts that I can smell from several steps away. They have a rich, sour fruit aroma, and each one is set on its own tiny golden tray.

“Hey, where did you get those?” I ask, stopping her as I find myself unable to resist. When I look at her, her face seems even blurrier than the others, and I can't even make out her hair color.

“Oh, these ones are from the paid bar. A thousand shards each. Want a few? I will sell them for two thousand each. I think they already ran out,” she says to me.

I glance at Tess, who just gives a shrug, and I initiate a transfer of 8 thousand shards and take four of the golden plates. I see the faint smile as the woman waves us off and leaves.

For a fleeting moment, the haze around her shimmers slightly, and I catch a faint flash of red hair.

The desserts are one of the best things I have ever put in my mouth, and I eat three of them, leaving Tess with one.

Focusing on something silly like that provides a decent distraction from my growing impatience and the feelings boiling inside me.

Walking by, we enter a room further away, and almost through the smell alone, I notice more of the golden plates at the bar in the corner. Each of these desserts is under glass, and there is a waitress standing near that table.

I cut my way there, weaving through groups of people and pulling Tess with us.

Without hesitation, I then take multiple of the desserts from the table and then look at the waitress. “Do I pay to you?”

She gives me a confused expression. “Pay, sir?”

Tess chuckles softly, and then the reality hits me.

Even the desserts don't taste that good anymore, and I push for us to leave the room. In silence, we make our way through the mansion.

There are many people, and some of them are easy to identify as powerful ones just through the way they carry themselves. We also make a game of it for a while, guessing who might be a Champion or an Absolute.

“I thought of it, and I disagree with you,” Tess says out of nowhere as we end up alone in a big room with ten small pillars, each housing a glass container with a different beautiful flower locked inside.

“In what?”

“That trust of yours, believing I wouldn't just ruin myself at some point in my life. I feel like Group 4 is the best thing that ever happened to me, and I'm glad you have me, even with all my flaws.”

“Do you now?”

“I do.”

“Then increase my cut to 30 percent instead of 20 for accompanying you in your gambling adventures,” I say.

She stares at me with a blank face for a few moments before a smile returns to her face, and she shakes her head. “Sometimes I don't know if you are just being yourself or if there is more thought behind the words you sometimes randomly spew out.”

“How rude. But look,” I gesture toward the man who just enters the room.

Of course I recognize him, even through the effect of the mask and the field here. I would recognize that trademarked, overly patient movement anywhere.

“Hey, Sav,” I wave to him, and he turns to us just for a second before coming to recognition and moving closer.

“I guess you two are here to deal with them?” he asks.

“Yes,” Tess answers him simply.

He looks between her and me before simply saying, “In that case, I'll leave it up to you and take my exit.”

I watch him begin to walk away when Tess's words catch up to him and make him stop for a moment. “Thank you for also wanting to help with this.”

His short hesitation almost makes me think he will say something, but he stays quiet and just leaves like that.

With Tess, we pass through multiple more rooms, talking, drinking, and tasting food for half an hour longer.

We circle back to the bottom floor just as new guests join: a group of five demons that used to be members of the Primordial Knights, all of them A-ranks.

A group that two weeks ago used to have 7 members when they met Derick and Noelle outside of Megacity.

***

Author Note: Sooo, some time ago I mentioned something about a week-long vacation with my family, and these trolls found a nice city they wanted to see, but it's very "last minute."

I don't like not giving you enough heads-up so you can pause your subs and such, so I am really sorry about that. But as always, you can ask for a refund. Just be aware that I will look into refunds after I get back from my trip.

That's it! As always, thank you all for your support, and sorry again for the "last minute" warning!

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